When a user first joins a social network, the user may have few, or no, social connections in the social network, and if the social network only presents friend's posts on the user feed, the feed may be almost empty. An empty feed means boredom and lack of interest by the user, and the user may decide to quit the social network.
In order to increase the number of the user's connections, the social network may make recommendations on possible new connections for the user, such as people that the user may already know, but not yet connected to, in the social network.